With Clio Payments you can pass on credit card fees to clients (surcharge), helping you to offset the cost of credit card processing. Clio Payments is designed to align with card brand rules, ensuring surcharges don’t surpass the cost of credit card acceptance (and capped at or 3% the transaction amount.
Understand surcharging rules and requirements
Note: Surcharging is generally available to Clio Payments customers in the U.S. You will not be able to surcharge clients who reside in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, or Puerto Rico. If your firm is located in any of these states/territory, surcharging is not a recommended option for your firm.
Surcharging rules are enforced by major card networks such as Visa and Mastercard. Review the laws in your state and the ethics opinions or rules of professional conduct with the Bar association in your jurisdiction to ensure you remain compliant with card network rules. Below is a brief summary for your reference.
Important: This list is not exhaustive and additional requirements may apply to you.
- Mastercard requires that you provide notification of the intent to surcharge at least 30 days before surcharging commences. You can complete their Merchant Surcharge Disclosure Form to notify them.
- Visa requires that the acquirer (a financial institution or payment facilitator) is notified of an intent to use surcharging 30 days before surcharging begins.
Note: Clio handles this requirement on your behalf.
- You must post signage in your office stating that surcharging only applies to credit card payments and include the surcharge amount on the signage.
- You must give clients the option to choose another payment method, such as debit or eCheck, before the surcharge is added to their bill.
Enable surcharging
To turn on surcharging, contact Clio Support. You will receive an email when the functionality is enabled for your account. After waiting the required 30 days and/or adhering to any additional requirements that may apply to you, you can enable surcharging as follows:
- Go Settings > Online Payments Settings.
- Click Go to Payments Settings, then go to Surcharging.
- Toggle Pass on credit card fees to on.
- Review the terms and conditions and check each box to indicate that you understand and accept the terms.
- Click Enable surcharging.
Note: Surcharging will disable Google Pay and Apple Pay options. In addition, surcharges will not be applied to credit card payments made using tap to pay. Once surcharging is turned on, all payment links accessed by your clients from their bills will include surcharges—even if the bill was sent prior to enabling surcharging.